President Barack Obama signed into law the 21st Century Cures Act, a sweeping health package to spur new medical treatments, reform mental health care and provide state grants to curb opioid abuse.
The goal of the bill is to allow new drugs and devices to reach patients more quickly by transforming the infrastructures that regulate biomedical research and the innovations it produces. The bill also provides billions of dollars in new research funding. However, there was some concern the bill benefits drug companies by watering down approval standards.
Cures establishes a new “innovation fund” that will provide $4.8 billion in new funding for the National Institutes of Health over 10 years to boost ongoing work in precision medicine, the cancer “moonshot” effort and brain-related research. The legislation also has $500 million in new funds for the Food and Drug Administration.